Harmful To Minors (book review)

H
armful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From
Sex

(University of Minnesota Press, 2002)

Judith Levine

Editor's Note:Harmful to Minors
has sparked a firestorm of controversy. One of author Judith
Levine's more incendiary assertions is that sexual relationships between
adults and adolescents are sometimes benign. To some that sounds like an
endorsement of pedophilia. Robert Knight, executive director of the
conservative Culture and Family Institute, calls the book "every child
molester's dream-and every parent's nightmare." Yet Jocelyn Elders, M.D.,
former United States surgeon general, says it's "a vitally important
book." Lost in the uproar is the fact that Levine's central claim is that
our efforts to protect children from sex does them more harm than good.
Our reviewer, Deborah Roffman, M.S., a leader in sexuality education,
takes a look at this larger question.

Americans are wrong about sex-or at least the sexual education of
our children. According to journalist Judith Levine, we take the view
that the less said the better, and what we do say is mostly in the form
of thou shalt nots. Adults are, Levine argues, afraid of the wrong
things-information, openness, healthy experimentation, sex itself-and
this "sexual politics of fear" harms our children. It blinds us to the
critical needs of youth, leaves children defenseless against the real
dangers they face (pregnancy, disease, exploitation, abuse) and sabotages
their right to healthy, pleasurable sexual expression. As Elders writes
in the book's introduction, "Treating sex as dangerous is dangerous in
itself."

Levine successfully challenges many assumptions that target sex as
the enemy and that have helped spawn the ever-expanding "abstinence-only"
movement in American schools. She describes the historical evolution of
attitudes toward child and adolescent sexuality throughout the millennia,
and the confluence of forces leading to the ascension of the religious
right as the major power broker in determining sexual education policy in
our schools. In doing so, she reveals that it is clearly ignorance and
ideology, not the developmental needs of young people, that underlie our
current approach. With our children's lives, health and happiness at
stake, Levine asserts, we need a bold new vision for addressing their
needs, one that recognizes that sex (defined as a range of sexual acts,
not merely intercourse) is a great gift to be celebrated and enjoyed, not
a menace to be contained and blamed.

It is in putting this vision into practice where Levine falters.
She proposes that children and adolescents have an innate right to
information, a right to experience sexual pleasure and a right to engage
in sexual activities with others. But she forgets that knowing, feeling
and doing are not one and the same: The right to one's feelings is
absolute, but the right to know and to act are relative to one's age and
circumstance.

Moreover, proclaiming (as Levine does) that sex is inherently good
is as dogmatic as proclaiming that sex is inherently bad. It sidesteps
the fact that sex is inherently powerful, with tremendous capacity for
good and pleasure, but also for pain and suffering. Helping young people
learn how to enjoy the gifts of sex is an adult responsibility, but so is
helping them to understand and manage its power.

Levine articulately addresses the moral issues intrinsic in sexual
decision-making. Yet nowhere does she offer strategies for helping
children and adolescents develop skills for moral thinking. And while she
includes poignant anecdotes that clearly demonstrate the importance of
parent-child communication in shaping healthy attitudes and behavior, she
summarily dismisses parents as successful sex educators. Most parents,
she insists, are simply too uncomfortable to "walk the walk"; besides,
kids would really rather talk to someone else, anyway. Where are kids to
find moral guidance on sex if not from their parents? The best Levine can
do is suggest a number of sex-education Web sites.

In a popular culture that glorifies sex at every turn, promotes the
sexualization of children at earlier and earlier ages and continues to
model unhealthy gender-role stereotyping and relationships, Levine's call
for a new approach to sex education is important-but inadequate. Our
children's best hope is not, as Levine suggests, that we simply give them
permission to enjoy sex and then step out of their way. Rather, we must
stay close enough to help them learn how to deal with sex in the most
positive and healthy ways. For us to do anything less is truly "harmful
to minors."

Deborah Roffman, M.S., is a sexuality educator and author of
Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking
Sense About Sex(Perseus, 2001).